From: "Rich Gauszka" 

there is no graceful exit from a civil war

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301faessay86201/james-d-fearon/iraq-s-civil-
war.html
Summary:  The White House still avoids the label, but by any reasonable
historical standard, the Iraqi civil war has begun. The record of past such
wars suggests that Washington cannot stop this one -- and that Iraqis will
be able to reach a power-sharing deal only after much more fighting, if
then. The United States can help bring about a settlement eventually by
balancing Iraqi factions from afar, but there is little it can do to avert
bloodshed now.

....

A civil war is a violent conflict within a country fought by organized
groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change
government policies. Everyday usage of the term "civil war" does
not entail a clear threshold for how much violence is necessary to qualify
a conflict as a civil war, as opposed to terrorism or low-level political
strife. Political scientists sometimes use a threshold of at least 1,000
killed over the course of a conflict. Based on this arguably rather low
figure, there have been around 125 civil wars since the end of World War
II, and there are roughly 20 ongoing today. If that threshold is increased
to an average of 1,000 people killed per year, there have still been over
90 civil wars since 1945. (It is often assumed that the prevalence of civil
wars is a post-Cold War phenomenon, but in fact the number of ongoing civil
wars increased steadily from 1945 to the early 1990s, before receding
somewhat to late-1970s levels.) The rate of killing in Iraq -- easily more
than 60,000 in the last three years -- puts the conflict in the company of
many recent ones that are routinely described as civil wars (for example,
those in Algeria, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and Sri Lanka). Indeed, even
the conservative estimate of 60,000 deaths would make Iraq the
ninth-deadliest civil war since 1945 in terms of annual casualties.

A major reason for the prevalence of civil wars is that they have been hard
to end. Their average duration since 1945 has been about ten years, with
half lasting more than seven years. Their long duration seems to result
from the way in which most of these conflicts have been fought: namely, by
rebel groups using guerrilla tactics, usually operating in rural regions of
postcolonial countries with weak administrative, police, and military
capabilities. Civil wars like that of the United States, featuring
conventional armies facing off along well-defined fronts, have been highly
unusual. Far more typical have been conflicts such as those in Algeria,
Colombia, Sri Lanka, and southern and western Sudan. As these cases
illustrate, rural guerrilla warfare can be an extremely robust tactic,
allowing relatively small numbers of rebels to gain partial control of
large amounts of territory for years despite expensive and brutal military
campaigns against them.


"Mark"  wrote in message
news:463ff3cd{at}w3.nls.net...
>I don't know Rich, it seems pretty obvious to me that abandoning them in
>view of: "And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing
>that country.," is a pretty wimpish surrender monkey move, but what the
>hell do I know? I'm just not very "progressive" I guess.
>
> I've only read about the "Werewolves," I never actually
engaged them in
> the *years* after we *won* WWII and had *signed* surrender papers from an
> *identifiable* nation-state enemy, nor had yet invoked the *Marshall
> Plan*; but yea, I guess since there is no one in a cleanly pressed uniform
> to sign a surrender declaration with a Mont Blanc pen, that we should just
> present our necks (or those of the regular Iraqi people that are having a
> tough time trusting us in view of the "the war is lost"
statements by the
> likes of dweebs like Reid and Murtha) to the scumbags and spout blood from
> our/their vacant shoulders...? Yes?
>
> "Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
> news:463ff020$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>> How can there be a surrender after our Commander-in-Chief said?
>>
>> "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the
>> United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is
>> engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."
>>
>>
>>
>> "Mark"  wrote in message
>> news:463fee2d$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>> Well, hell Randy, I don't really don't give a shit if a fence won't
>>> work, the border still has to be secured.
>>>
>>> I guess what we need then, is the National Guard on the border with lots
>>> of rounds of live ammunition until the illegal trespassers figure out
>>> that we're serious about stopping them. >> in Iraq and bring them on home>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Randy"  wrote in message
news:463fec9e$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>>> Mark wrote:
>>>>> "Randy"  wrote in
message: It gets worse-to restock the
>>>>> Guard will take 5 years, even if the money is ready to be spent
>>>>> yesterday.
>>>>>
>>>>> That's probably true. How many years will it take to
stop illegal
>>>>> aliens from walking/swimming across our border? How
many American
>>>>> lives? Jobs? Hospital Beds? Children? Will be lost?
>>>>>
>>>>> I guess, if only we weren't engaging in the wrong war,
in the wrong
>>>>> place, at the wrong time, that our National Guard could actually
>>>>> protect our borders... >>>> to "Bush's War" did it?>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Securing the borders has had the wrong emphasis placed on doing the
>>>> wrong things.
>>>>
>>>> Penn and Teller devastatingly proved the big fence idea-they hired a
>>>> bunch of illegals to build the kind of fence they're trying to build
>>>> between the US and Mexican Border. It took the crew about 8 hours.
>>>>
>>>> As a test, they got through it in 8 minutes-over the top, straight
>>>> through, and under.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

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